Rest My Soul on Fire
by MidsommerMadness
Summary: There's no sound, no soul, no freedom. Except for here. It sets me alight, the way you move in the midst of this sound. There's a joke here somewhere and it's on me If you stay on the streets of this town they'll be carving you up alright They say you gotta stay hungry And I'm just about starving tonight This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark.


Dive bars are about the only kind around anymore. Alcohol is far from illegal but she chooses not to drink. Music, however, is, or almost nearly so. The stuff this place plays absolutely is. But the fake ID her cousin made her last year still works so here she comes. Sneaking around for a few hours on dim dark nights without any moon, lingering in the dusky city and drifting into the underground bar to dance the night away, her eyes closed, her heart pounding.

Discovering this was the best thing that ever happened. Before when her father had still been present, she had listened to the state-sanctioned stuff, which honestly got boring. When she had begun to sing on her own, to repeat the old folk songs that she heard snippets of in alleys and from her mother when she thought that she wasn't looking, her cousin had brought her to another place. She had been terrified by the thumping beats and the strange instruments. She recognized drums, one of them the kind the military band played to keep time. The kind of guitar that was used to sing the hymns but made out of plastic and connected to a black box. And the man at the microphone was making sounds she had never known a human could make unless they were, perhaps, in pain.

Hange wouldn't let her leave and halfway through the night, she realized why she didn't protest more. Her father had disappeared so she was halfway numb with shock but she realized that truly, the man making music with his own voice was, how to say it? She was in pain and this man resonated with her. It was after that she joined Hange on the floor and began to learn how to dance, to slide in between the writhing bodies to her own beat. Angry, filled with grief, filled with hope, filled with ecstasy she had danced with one of the only real family she had left. Now she dances alone. (She had never told her mother, out of self-preservation)

The club was emptier tonight than usual, being a Thursday and all but still, she danced alone, a little spot near the wall. She turned away from any potential partners, letting the music wash over her, thinking. It was meditative, this rhythm, the thumping bass, the silvery tones that rung like bells in her head, in her heart. She opened her eyes briefly to reorient, thinking of kindness hidden behind silver eyes and closed her eyes once more, shaking her head at the impression the flashing lights had left behind her eyes of one such man meeting her eyes through the smoke.

She felt one of her fellow law-breakers moving behind her in a way she had become familiar with as an attempt to begin dancing _with_ her. She turned around to move and give an apology and was met with clear grey eyes and a raised eyebrow. "I thought the party scene wasn't your thing."

She flushed and stopped. He had his hands in his pockets that _look_ on his face as if he was taking everything in and was completely and utterly bored with it. Like there was something more important going on in his head. Another dancer jostled her into him and he placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her. "Perhaps we should…" he nodded and easily slipped through the shifting bodies, hardly touching any one of them, to an empty table in the corner. He signaled a waiter and turned to her.

"What are you doing here?" she stared at him. He raised his eyebrows again. What did he mean, what was she doing there. She was here for the same thing as everyone else, wasn't she?

"I like the music here. Fits my taste."

Something like a smile flitted briefly over his face, nearly to quick to catch. He nodded thanks to the waiter and drank deeply from a cup. She watched him put his hand over the cup like he was catching the steam and drink that was. She looked down at the porcelain teacup in front of her. "What about you?"

"The music's good." She noted again he wasn't a man of many words.

She tried to think of something else to say. "The drinks are good too." She looked at Levi to see him staring pointedly at her cup. She flushed and picked it up. The aroma was a rich, dark, smoky scent she hadn't smelled for a long time. "Black tea?" she asked in amazement. She blew on the top and drank as deeply as she good, feeling the taste on her tongue. "My father used to get my mother this for her birthday." She said in awe and then stared at the cup, her throat tight.

"Hey." She looked up at the man in front of her. "Finish your tea." She stared again. Some of the things he said, she just couldn't believe… he didn't break eye contact with her and she swallowed back the tears before drinking the last of the tea down to the dregs.

A new song had started up and Levi pushed up from the table. He held out his hand without a word. She took it without hesitation. He steered them to a place where the beats of the music were loud enough to resonate with their bones.

And they danced.

It was hard to begin. She realized she knew next to nothing about this man who had saved her life. But when he came behind her, dragging her arms up into the air with his and pulling her into him, she didn't say a word. She closed her eyes and let the rhythm take her.

She never stayed this late. Always coming home in time to shower, wash the smell of others out of her hair and clothes and tumble into bed. Always waking early enough to cover the shadows with rice-powder and pretend she hadn't spent the night dancing to illicit music.

Now, time didn't matter. Sometimes they lost one another in the crowd, but by the time the last real song played, sounded like the band said it was an old thing called Unified Fields, they had found one another again.

Near the end, their breath mingling (she could smell something strong on him) he had placed his mouth next to her ear, skimming her cheek on the way up with his nose. "Let's get out of here."

She had whispered one word, _ok_ , and taken his hand. He had ordered a whiskey of some sort earlier and drained the last of it before they walked to their door and retrieved both of their coats. She wondered when he had gotten her ticket, since it had been tucked securely into the pocket of the tight jeans she wore to these kinds of things.

The air cut against their cheeks, turning noses pink in the wind after the warmth of the underground bar. He passed her his black helmet and she balked. "You should wear that." He snorted and shoved it into her hands, pulling the key-chip to the bike from a pocket of his jacket. "My brain smeared over the road is significantly less valuable than yours." She snickered, almost choking. But she was still high off of something. Nothing real, but something about _this_ about _him_. The same kind of high she got every time she walked into a club or tapped her foot to a snatch of forbidden tune.

She gripped his middle tightly as the black bike started up with a purr and zipped away down the road. They didn't say a word. They didn't go anywhere. He never asked and neither did she. She pressed her helmeted head against his shoulder as the dark city flew by.

Sina, Rose, Maria, Trost. The Interior had always looked so dim, so dark and dank and cold at night. Really it looked that way all the time. Nothing but the warmth of the Underground dives and black-market music gigs had ever tempted her to wander the cities. She stayed silent as candlelit windows slid past her vision. The few essential streetlights passed by. They were at the center of the world and everything circled around them.

Levi finally cut the engine at the top of a hill on the border where Trost began. She dismounted and removed the helmet with fingers numbed by cold. He hung the helmet off of the handlebars and took her icy hands, rubbing them briefly between his own before leading her further to the top.

It looked as though someone above had scattered stars or perhaps only dew that reflected the stars across the whole of the Interior. This ended abruptly where the walls of the outer districts began but the inhabited places glittered. Levi passed her a pair of gloves when she started to shiver but stayed put, staring out over the Interior, turning around in a slow circle to see the very center, Sina and then back around to the Outside and sat down on the stones. They only left when the tiniest hint of dawn began peaking over the eastern horizon.

They were halfway through Rose when Levi spoke, his voice gravelly. It carried back to her slowly from where she clung in a sort of contented haze. Seeing the city and feeling the warmth of his body seeping into her chilled arms. "I go to that place often. But I didn't see you. Never danced. Just came to listen. Their tea's really good."

"I never saw you either. I don't pay a lot of attention. I have to pretend I'm alone when I'm dancing like that or I get nervous."

A rumble vibrated in his chest. She realized he was chuckling. "Don't be nervous."

She smiled from within his helmet. It smelled like new leather and men's cologne. "I only go there to listen. And to dance," she said.

"I'll watch you then," he replied. She felt warmth flow through her.

"You're a very good dancer."

She felt more than heard his harrumph.

They pulled up slowly into her drive. The night was graying and she took off his helmet, handing it back and shaking out her hair. His grey eyes pierced through her and she wanted to look away. She began to fumble with the key tied onto her wrist, looking down at the worn cord.

He didn't go to walk her to the door but he felt him watching her all the way. Halfway there she heard a sound and turned around just in time to catch another black helmet with a little grey pattern on the back. This one was smaller than the one he had given her before. Fitted for a woman.

"For next time. I hold safety in high esteem." His voice was quiet. For her ears only.

He was away before she could respond, a non-descript figure on a black bike in the graying dawn, with a black helmet on. She shook her head, unsure whether to laugh or growl and tucked the helmet under her arm and slipped into her back garden.


End file.
